Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Hi all,

Now preparing my defence which has to be in by the 15 July, 2014.

Draft of my defence follows:

"Following receipt of CLAIM NO from the Northampton County Court I have applied for copies of the documents required in order to satisfactorily complete my defence from Lowell Portfolio the claimant, and Bryan Carter the claimants solicitors.

On the 20 June, 2014 I sent a request for a copy of my CCA agreement to Lowell Porfolio along with the statutory £1 fee to which I have received no response.

On the 20 June, 2014 a request under Section 31.14 was sent to Bryan Carter Solicitors and a response was received from them indicating that the requirement for disclosure did not apply to their claim since it was a matter that would subsequently be allocated to the Small Claims Court.

On the 27 June, 2014 I sent a further letter to Bryan Carter Solicitors. I extract a copy of the relevant paragraph from this letter as follows:

"You should note that this claim has not yet been allocated to a specific track and the provisions of CPR 27(2) are of no effect. Had your claim not been issued through CCBC the Claimant would have been obliged to attach copies of the documentation upon which it relies to the Particulars of Claim. I , as Defendant, am entitled to see the documents on which the Claimant relies and which you will have to produce at trial. Disclosure at this stage will enable me to fully plead my case and further the overriding Objective."

A second letter was subsequently received from Bryan Carter Solicitors refusing to respond to my request for documentation.

At this stage without documentation I am responding to the court requesting that the court orders Lowell Portfolio and Bryan Carter Solicitors to provide the necessary documentation in order for me to fully plead my case, giving a set time scale for their response to be received.

In the event that the relevant paperwork is received from Lowell Portfolio and Bryan Carter Solicitors I will then be in a position to complete my defence."


All help/suggestions gratefully received. Also can I submit this defence online on the moneyclaim site and view the progress of the claim online thereafter or should I send the defence form to Northampton County Court. If there are other elements that I should add into this simple defence then please advise.

[Amethyst]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Excellent start I wouldn't though give the court an excuse to agree with the reasons given by BC for not complying with the CPR request.

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Following submission of my defence the following week I have received a letter from Bryan Carter enclosing a copy of their response to the court, and a letter to me details as follows:

To the court: Our instructions are that the Claimant wishes to proceed with the Claim. We look forward to hearing from the Court with directions.

To me: The claimant agrees in principle to mediation. Giving me a telephone number to contact them for without prejudice negotiations.

Bearing all the foregoing in mind should I again write to them expressing that they have failed to comply with any of my requests for the provision of documentation surrounding the claim they have made. Since I currently have no documentary evidence surrounding the claim, as per my defence I am unable to correspond with them further in this matter until my request has been complied with.

What are my options at this point please?

[Amethyst]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Hiya, That sounds absolutely standard from Bryan Carter so no, no need to do anything, well unless you want to negotiate a settlement based on their lack of documents. You should next receive either Directions or an allocation/directions questionnaire. As this is a Credit Card debt they should not be allowed to enforce until they come up with the credit agreement. Let us know if / when you receive anything from BC or the Court. It could be another week or so until you hear.

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Hiya, That sounds absolutely standard from Bryan Carter so no, no need to do anything, well unless you want to negotiate a settlement based on their lack of documents. You should next receive either Directions or an allocation/directions questionnaire. As this is a Credit Card debt they should not be allowed to enforce until they come up with the credit agreement. Let us know if / when you receive anything from BC or the Court. It could be another week or so until you hear.

Thanks for your swift response Amethyst. Will await next documents then - I certainly have no wish to negotiate until they provide the correct documentation.

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Since my last post on the 30 July, 2014 I have received a further letter from Bryan Carter requesting settlement out of court. I now have a Notice from the Court to fill in headed "Notice of Proposed Allocation to the Small Claims Track". Enclosed with it is Directions Questionnaire for the Small Claims Track about Settlement/Mediation/Hearing and Venue for hearing. What should I do at this point please? Bryan Carter/Lowell have still not supplied any documentary evidence surrounding their claim, at what point will the court direct them to do so or does this have to go to the next stage for this to be a consideration?

Thanks in advance.

[MIKE770]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

doing their usual antics.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

It's standard procedure. Claims under £10k are provisionally allocated to small claims. You need to fill in the questionnaire and return it to the court. The court will then give directions to both parties, this is where the claimant will be asked to disclose documents. :thumb:

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Ok, so I am clear I fill in the allocation questionnaire indicating that I want the hearing at a court which is local to me since there is no reason mediate with Bryan Carter as neither they nor the claimant have supplied any documentary evidence of their claim? Part of the directions of the court to them will be to give them 28 days to supply the documentary evidence before any hearing is set?

Thank you for your response.

[Amethyst]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Hiya, I got your pm, looks like you're being looked after ok xx

''Ok, so I am clear I fill in the allocation questionnaire indicating that I want the hearing at a court which is local to me since there is no reason mediate with Bryan Carter as neither they nor the claimant have supplied any documentary evidence of their claim? ''

Spot on

Part of the directions of the court to them will be to give them 28 days to supply the documentary evidence before any hearing is set?''

That's what you are hoping for.

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Thanks for your reply also Amber, one step at a time I guess the next stage depends on BC being asked for the evidence as requested of them in my defence.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Thanks for your reply also Amber, one step at a time I guess the next stage depends on BC being asked for the evidence as requested of them in my defence.

Indeed, that's what the CPR says: http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/pro...l/rules/part27

Preparation for the hearing

27.4
(1) After allocation the court will –
(a) give standard directions and fix a date for the final hearing;

(3) In this rule –
(a) ‘standard directions’ means –
(i) a direction that each party shall, at least 14 days before the date fixed for the final hearing, file and serve on every other party copies of all documents (including any expert’s report) on which he intends to rely at the hearing; and

[bcarterproblems]

Re: Capital 1 Debt Sold on to Lowell Financial

Very interesting to read the information in Section 27 from the link you provided.

[bcarterproblems]

Bryan Carter/Lowell/Capital One - Continuation of previous posts

After more than three months I have just received documentation requested from Lowell and Bryan Carter today which gives me one day to submit my witness statement to be within 14 days of the court hearing date.

The original agreement that they have enclosed with their witness statement is dated 1997. It appears to be a marketing form sent out by Capital One at that time which I signed.. The wording on the page signed is just deciferable as indicating my agreement to the terms and conditions as outlined overleaf or as amended from time to time. To my knowledge I believe for an agreement to be enforceable under the consumer credit act the salient details of interest rates etc have to appear on the same page as the signature. The pages that Lowell have indicated belong to document UB1 number 15. Other than the page that was signed these could have been drawn from any number of different agreements over the period from 1997 to 2014, neither I nor anyone else could prove that these were the terms I agreed to when this card was taken out. Having decifered the wording surrounding my signature I have summarised this in the attached word document.

I have also summarised the information from the witness statement of the Legal Administrator at Bryan Carter in a second file. Paragraph 12 of this makes no sense other than if it were re-written as they appear to be telling the court that they are advising me of something therein at this point in time "the claimant is advised".

Following your advice I will draft my witness statement and submit this to the court tomorrow. Having seen the information I requested three months ago and was entitled to by statute it seems very unfair that Lowell have chosen now to find the paperwork they should have supplied three months earlier leaving little time to prepare a defence. It seems they have intentionally done this in the circumstances is this allowable that they remedy their breach and I have to respond immediately with no time to peruse the paperwork supplied other than after I have had to file my witness statement?

Any advice as to the comments they have made and the legal way to refute these would be much appreciated also.

In their document pack UB1 purports to be the agreement between Capital One and myself (15 pages - 1 signed with the least information)
UB2 Summaries of the card statements from 1999 to 2014
UB3 Lowells notice of assignment

I attach:

Copy of the page signed by myself in 1997 when taking out the credit card with personal details blanked out - I have placed the points agreed to on the face of this document in a file on it's own and attached this also.

Summary of Lowell's/BC's witness statement.

My summary of the wording on the agreement which I have managed to decifer.

Thanks in advance.

[Kafka]

Re: Bryan Carter/Lowell/Capital One - Continuation of previous posts

This would be better posted with the earlier thread so you can see the whole story together.